Category Archives: Seasteading

Joe Quirk is the president of the Seasteading Institute, which hopes to see the worlds oceans settled with hundreds of environmentally restorative floating cities. The first steps in that process are currently underway.

Were going to start very small with sustainable floating islands in the protected lagoon of Tahiti, for about 250 people, Quirk says in Episode 289 of the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast. We hope to have this available by 2020.

Floating cities of the future would feature vast underwater algae farms that would provide a healthy food source for residents. Quirk says that algae can be much more appetizing than most people realize.

Somebody discovered that if you smoke dulse, it tastes like bacon, he says. One of the guys that was featured on Iron Chef serves it in his restaurants.

Eventually the Seasteading Institute hopes to develop floating platforms for individual families, which would make it easy to leave one seastead and join another. Hopefully that sort of freedom would force seasteads to compete over who can treat their residents the best. The idea is to vote with your house, Quirk says.

Seasteading has often been a topic of conversation in Silicon Valley, but that talk has waned in recent years. But Quirk believes that the momentum behind seasteading is unstoppable, with more and more of the necessary technologies finally coming online, and that the main obstacle at this point is just overcoming sensationalized claims about seasteaders themselves.

I feel the greatest threat to seasteading is political backlash, he says. Theres such a misperception that its about Dr. Evil billionaires going out there to experiment on children and creating evil islands of selfishness, and were constantly battling against that perception.

Listen to our complete interview with Joe Quirk in Episode 289 of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Joe Quirk on OTEC:

Once youre on the high seas you can push forward one of my favorite technologies, which is Ocean Thermal Energy Conversionor OTECwhich is a proven green technology that basically uses the ocean as a solar panel. So at the surface of the tropical oceans where seasteading is starting, the water is very warm. The sun really warms it, especially near the equator, but a hundred meters down its very cold, and if you have a thousand-meter pipe going down, you have a huge temperature difference, and this can run a gigantic turbine that can produce a tremendous amount of electricity. The technology was proven to work during the Carter administration, and several island nations around the world are already pushing forward OTEC plants. The Bahamas last I heard is working on two.

Joe Quirk on the media:

Not all media is like [Geeks Guide to the Galaxy], where you just have a conversation and then Im criticized for what I actually say. With most mainstream mediaor lamestream media, as I call itsomeone would go through this long conversation we have, where Im speaking from my heart, as transparently as possible, and you would take out the section that makes me sound bad, or makes it sound like there has to be conflict, and you would feature that up front in your piece, and then that would come to be the statement I would answer to. And this has just happened over and over with seasteaders. You think that the journalist is on your side, but we get misrepresented often. So our only choice was to write this book and tell a bigger, better, more exciting story.

Joe Quirk on Ephemerisle:

A reality TV show got in touch with the Seasteading Institute and got very interested in showing the conflicts that occur between people trying to build a new society that floats. They scouted out Ephemerisle and became discouraged, because everybody was getting alongbecause you can take your house and float somewhere else. So they decided not to do Ephemerisle, and they basically imitated Ephemerisle, and went back to the UK, and tried to set up a TV show on several fortsold, abandoned military forts on the waterthat are sort of set on land, where people are forced to live together. So basically they removed the dynamics of seasteading, which is if you dont get along with people, you can simply take your house and go float elsewhere.

Joe Quirk on floating hospitals:

There are companies in the US that are already willing to pay their employees to fly to the Cayman Islandsand take a month-long vacation, with a butler, with concierge serviceand theyll pay them an extra few thousand dollars for their troubles, because all that put together is cheaper than just getting them a knee replacement operation in the United States. One of the most interesting aquapreneuers is a guy who uses Devi Shetty as an example of islands just off the coast of various countries where you can set up a unique jurisdiction and provide better, cheaper, faster health care. And some time after I became enthralled with this idea and decided to feature Devi Shetty in the book. So Im saying this famous humanitarian heart surgeon is already a seasteader, and I wish he would get in touch with us.

The technology to foster the fluid mechanics of voluntary societies is at hand. The Seasteading Institute is a nonprofit think-tank working to provide a machinery of freedom to choose new societies on the blue frontier. The most successful floating cities can then inspire change around the world.

Joe Quirk is the president of the Seasteading Institute, which hopes to see the worlds oceans settled with hundreds of environmentally restorative floating cities. The first steps in that process are currently underway.

Were going to start very small with sustainable floating islands in the protected lagoon of Tahiti, for about 250 people, Quirk says in Episode 289 of the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast. We hope to have this available by 2020.

Floating cities of the future would feature vast underwater algae farms that would provide a healthy food source for residents. Quirk says that algae can be much more appetizing than most people realize.

Somebody discovered that if you smoke dulse, it tastes like bacon, he says. One of the guys that was featured on Iron Chef serves it in his restaurants.

Eventually the Seasteading Institute hopes to develop floating platforms for individual families, which would make it easy to leave one seastead and join another. Hopefully that sort of freedom would force seasteads to compete over who can treat their residents the best. The idea is to vote with your house, Quirk says.

Seasteading has often been a topic of conversation in Silicon Valley, but that talk has waned in recent years. But Quirk believes that the momentum behind seasteading is unstoppable, with more and more of the necessary technologies finally coming online, and that the main obstacle at this point is just overcoming sensationalized claims about seasteaders themselves.

I feel the greatest threat to seasteading is political backlash, he says. Theres such a misperception that its about Dr. Evil billionaires going out there to experiment on children and creating evil islands of selfishness, and were constantly battling against that perception.

Listen to our complete interview with Joe Quirk in Episode 289 of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Joe Quirk on OTEC:

Once youre on the high seas you can push forward one of my favorite technologies, which is Ocean Thermal Energy Conversionor OTECwhich is a proven green technology that basically uses the ocean as a solar panel. So at the surface of the tropical oceans where seasteading is starting, the water is very warm. The sun really warms it, especially near the equator, but a hundred meters down its very cold, and if you have a thousand-meter pipe going down, you have a huge temperature difference, and this can run a gigantic turbine that can produce a tremendous amount of electricity. The technology was proven to work during the Carter administration, and several island nations around the world are already pushing forward OTEC plants. The Bahamas last I heard is working on two.

Joe Quirk on the media:

Not all media is like [Geeks Guide to the Galaxy], where you just have a conversation and then Im criticized for what I actually say. With most mainstream mediaor lamestream media, as I call itsomeone would go through this long conversation we have, where Im speaking from my heart, as transparently as possible, and you would take out the section that makes me sound bad, or makes it sound like there has to be conflict, and you would feature that up front in your piece, and then that would come to be the statement I would answer to. And this has just happened over and over with seasteaders. You think that the journalist is on your side, but we get misrepresented often. So our only choice was to write this book and tell a bigger, better, more exciting story.

Joe Quirk on Ephemerisle:

A reality TV show got in touch with the Seasteading Institute and got very interested in showing the conflicts that occur between people trying to build a new society that floats. They scouted out Ephemerisle and became discouraged, because everybody was getting alongbecause you can take your house and float somewhere else. So they decided not to do Ephemerisle, and they basically imitated Ephemerisle, and went back to the UK, and tried to set up a TV show on several fortsold, abandoned military forts on the waterthat are sort of set on land, where people are forced to live together. So basically they removed the dynamics of seasteading, which is if you dont get along with people, you can simply take your house and go float elsewhere.

Joe Quirk on floating hospitals:

There are companies in the US that are already willing to pay their employees to fly to the Cayman Islandsand take a month-long vacation, with a butler, with concierge serviceand theyll pay them an extra few thousand dollars for their troubles, because all that put together is cheaper than just getting them a knee replacement operation in the United States. One of the most interesting aquapreneuers is a guy who uses Devi Shetty as an example of islands just off the coast of various countries where you can set up a unique jurisdiction and provide better, cheaper, faster health care. And some time after I became enthralled with this idea and decided to feature Devi Shetty in the book. So Im saying this famous humanitarian heart surgeon is already a seasteader, and I wish he would get in touch with us.

Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by any government. The term is a combination of the words sea and homesteading.

Seasteaders say such autonomous floating cities would foster faster development of techniques “to feed the hungry, cure the sick, clean the atmosphere and enrich the poor”.[1][2] Some critics fear seasteads are designed more as a refuge for the wealthy to avoid taxes or other problems.[3][4]

Proposed structures have included modified cruise ships, refitted oil platform, a decommissioned anti-aircraft platform, and custom-built floating islands.[5] No one has yet created a state on the high seas that has been recognized as a sovereign state.

As an intermediate step, the Seasteading Institute has promoted cooperating with an existing nation to prototype floating islands that are legally semi-autonomous within the nation’s protected territorial waters. On January 13, 2017, the Seasteading Institute signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with French Polynesia to create the first semi-autonomous “seazone”. The “seazone” will be the location of a prototype seastead designed by marine engineering firm Blue 21.[6][7]

Many architects and firms have created designs for floating cities, including Vincent Callebaut,[8][9] Paolo Soleri[10] and companies such as Shimizu and E. Kevin Schopfer.[11]

Marshall Savage discussed building tethered artificial islands in his 1992 book The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps, with several color plates illustrating his ideas.

Other historical predecessors and inspirations for seasteading include:

At least two people independently coined the term seasteading: Ken Neumeyer in his book Sailing the Farm (1981) and Wayne Gramlich in his article “Seasteading Homesteading on the High Seas” (1998).[13]

Gramlichs essay attracted the attention of Patri Friedman.[14] The two began working together and posted their first collaborative book online in 2001.[15] Their book explored many aspects of seasteading from waste disposal to flags of convenience. This collaboration led to the creation of the non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI) in 2008.

On April 15, 2008, Wayne Gramlich and Patri Friedman founded the 501(c)(3) non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI), an organization formed to facilitate the establishment of autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms operating in international waters.[16][17][18]

Friedman and Gramlich noted that according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 nautical miles (370km) from shore. Beyond that boundary lie the high seas, which are not subject to the laws of any sovereign state other than the flag under which a ship sails.

They proposed that a seastead could take advantage of the absence of laws and regulations outside the sovereignty of nations to experiment with new governance systems, and allow the citizens of existing governments to exit more easily.

“When seasteading becomes a viable alternative, switching from one government to another would be a matter of sailing to the other without even leaving your house,” said Patri Friedman at the first annual Seasteading conference.[16][19][20]

The Seasteading Institute (TSI) focused on three areas: building a community, doing research, and building the first seastead in the San Francisco Bay. TSI advocated starting small, using proven technology as much as possible.[21]

The project picked up mainstream exposure after having been brought to the attention of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Thiel donated $500,000 in initial seed capital to start The Seasteading Institute, and has contributed $1.7 million [22] in total to date. He also spoke out on behalf of its viability in his essay “The Education of a Libertarian”.[23]

As a result of Thiel’s backing, TSI received widespread media attention from a variety of sources including [24] The Economist[18] Business Insider,[25] and BBC.[26][27]

In 2008, Friedman and Gramlich had hoped to float the first prototype seastead in the San Francisco Bay by 2010[28][29] Plans were to launch a seastead by 2014,[30] and TSI projected that the seasteading population would exceed 150 individuals in 2015.[31] TSI did not meet these initial targets.

In January 2009, the Seasteading Institute patented a design for a 200-person resort seastead, ClubStead, about a city block in size, produced by consultancy firm Marine Innovation & Technology. The ClubStead design marked the first major engineering analysis in the seasteading movement.[18][32][33]

In the spring of 2013,[34] TSI launched The Floating City Project.[35] The project proposed to locate a floating city within the territorial waters of an existing nation, rather than the open ocean.[36] TSI claimed that doing so would have several advantages:

In October 2013, the Institute raised $27,082 from 291 funders in a crowdfunding campaign[37] TSI used the funds to hire the Dutch marine engineering firm DeltaSync[38] to write an engineering study for The Floating City Project.

In September 2016 the Seasteading Institute met with officials in French Polynesia[39] to discuss building a prototype seastead in a sheltered lagoon. Teva Rohfristch, Minister for Economic Recovery was the first to invite The Seasteading Institute to meet with government officials.The meeting was arranged by Former Minister of Tourism, Marc Collins.[40]

On January 13, 2017, French Polynesia Minister of Housing, Jean-Christophe Bouissou signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with TSI to create the first semi-autonomous “seazone”. TSI spun off a for-profit company called “Blue Frontiers”, which will build and operate a prototype seastead in the zone.[41] The prototype will be based on a design by marine engineering firm Blue 21.[6][7]

On January 13, 2017, the French Polynesian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with The Seasteading Institute to cooperate on creating legal framework to allow for the development of The Floating Island Project. The legislation will give the Floating Island Project its own “special governing framework” creating an “innovative special economic zone.”[42]

The Seasteading Institute announced the formation of a new company, Blue Frontiers, to construct the Floating Island Project.[40][43]

Cruise ships are a proven technology, and address most of the challenges of living at sea for extended periods of time. However, they’re typically optimized for travel and short-term stay, not for permanent residence in a single location.

Examples:

Platform designs based on spar buoys, similar to oil platforms.[46] In this design, the platforms rest on spars in the shape of floating dumbbells, with the living area high above sea level. Building on spars in this fashion reduces the influence of wave action on the structure.[32]

Examples:

There are numerous seastead designs based around interlocking modules made of reinforced concrete.[48] Reinforced cement is used for floating docks, oil platforms, dams, and other marine structures.

Examples:

A single, monolithic structure that is not intended to be expanded or connected to other modules.

Examples:

The SeaOrbiter is an oceangoing research vessel designed to give scientists and others a residential yet mobile research station. The station will have laboratories, workshops, living quarters and a pressurized deck to support divers and submarines. It is headed by French architect Jacques Rougerie, oceanographer Jacques Piccard and astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien. The cost is expected to be around $52.7 million.[53]

Blueseed was a company aiming to float a ship near Silicon Valley to serve as a visa-free startup community and entrepreneurial incubator. Blueseed founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija met when both were employees of The Seasteading Institute. The project planned to offer living and office space, high-speed Internet connectivity, and regular ferry service to the mainland[54][44] but as of 2014 the project is “on hold”.[55][54][44]

Criticisms have been leveled at both the practicality and desirability of seasteading. These can be broken down into governmental, logistical, and societal categories.

Critics believe that creating governance structures from scratch is a lot harder than it seems.[56] Additionally, seasteads would still be at risk of political dominance at the hands of nation states.[18]

On a logistical level, Seasteads could be too remote, and not offer sufficient amenities (such as access to culture, restaurants, shopping) to be attractive to potential residents.[18] It is also possible that seasteads can’t be built to withstand open ocean conditions in an economical fashion.[56][18]

Seasteads may cause environmental damage from visual pollution, resource extraction, and waste production. Some critics believe that Seasteads will exploit both residents and the local population, though it this is purely hypothetical.[56] Some believe that Seasteads exist primarily to allow wealthy individuals to avoid paying taxes.[3] Others believe that Seasteads will allow seastead residents to pursue anti-social ends, such as avoiding financial, environmental, and labor regulations.[3][56]

The Seasteading Institute held its first conference in Burlingame, California, October 10, 2008. 45 people from 9 countries attended.[57] The second Seasteading conference was significantly larger, and held in San Francisco, California, September 2830, 2009.[58][59] The third Seasteading conference took place on May 31 – June 2, 2012.[60]

L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, and his executive leadership became a maritime based community named the Sea Organization (Sea Org). Beginning in 1967 with a complement of four ships the Sea Org spent most of its existence on the high sea, visiting ports around the world for refueling and resupply. In 1975 much of these operations were shifted to land based locations around the world, especially in the USA (e.g. Clearwater, FL) and the UK (Saint Hill Manor).

Seasteading has been imagined numerous times in pop culture in recent years.

Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by any government. The term is a combination of the words sea and homesteading.

Seasteaders say such autonomous floating cities will foster faster development of techniques “to feed the hungry, cure the sick, clean the atmosphere and enrich the poor”.[1][2] Some critics fear seasteads are designed more as a refuge for the wealthy to avoid taxes or other problems.[3][4]

Proposed structures have included modified cruise ships, refitted oil platform, a decommissioned anti-aircraft platform, and custom-built floating islands.[5] No one has yet created a state on the high seas that has been recognized as a sovereign state.

As an intermediate step, the Seasteading Institute has promoted cooperating with an existing nation to prototype floating islands that are legally semi-autonomous within the nation’s protected territorial waters. On January 13, 2017, the Seasteading Institute signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with French Polynesia to create the first semi-autonomous “seazone”. The “seazone” will be the location of a prototype seastead designed by marine engineering firm Blue 21.[6][7]

Many architects and firms have created designs for floating cities, including Vincent Callebaut,[8][9]Paolo Soleri[10] and companies such as Shimizu and E. Kevin Schopfer.[11]

Marshall Savage discussed building tethered artificial islands in his book The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps, with several color plates illustrating his ideas.

Other historical predecessors and inspirations for seasteading include:

At least two people independently coined the term seasteading: Ken Neumeyer in his book Sailing the Farm (1981) and Wayne Gramlich in his article “Seasteading Homesteading on the High Seas” (1998).[13]

Gramlichs essay attracted the attention of Patri Friedman.[14] The two began working together and posted their first collaborative book online in 2001.[15] Their book explored many aspects of seasteading from waste disposal to flags of convenience. This collaboration led to the creation of the non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI) in 2008.

On April 15, 2008, Wayne Gramlich and Patri Friedman founded the 501(c)(3) non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI), an organization formed to facilitate the establishment of autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms operating in international waters.[16][17][18]

Friedman and Gramlich noted that according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 nautical miles (370km) from shore. Beyond that boundary lie the high seas, which are not subject to the laws of any sovereign state other than the flag under which a ship sails.

They proposed that a seastead could take advantage of the absence of laws and regulations outside the sovereignty of nations to experiment with new governance systems, and allow the citizens of existing governments to exit more easily.

“When seasteading becomes a viable alternative, switching from one government to another would be a matter of sailing to the other without even leaving your house,” said Patri Friedman at the first annual Seasteading conference.[16][19][20]

The Seasteading Institute (TSI) focused on three areas: building a community, doing research, and building the first seastead in the San Francisco Bay. TSI advocated starting small, using proven technology as much as possible.[21]

The project picked up mainstream exposure after having been brought to the attention of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Thiel donated $500,000 in initial seed capital to start The Seasteading Institute, and has contributed $1.7 million [22] in total to date. He also spoke out on behalf of its viability in his essay “The Education of a Libertarian”.[23]

As a result of Thiel’s backing, TSI received widespread media attention from a variety of sources including [24]The Economist[18] Business Insider,[25] and BBC.[26][27]

In 2008, Friedman and Gramlich had hoped to float the first prototype seastead in the San Francisco Bay by 2010[28][29] Plans were to launch a seastead by 2014,[30] and TSI projected that the seasteading population would exceed 150 individuals in 2015.[31] TSI did not meet these initial targets.

In January 2009, the Seasteading Institute patented a design for a 200-person resort seastead, ClubStead, about a city block in size, produced by consultancy firm Marine Innovation & Technology. The ClubStead design marked the first major engineering analysis in the seasteading movement.[18][32][33]

In the spring of 2013,[34] TSI launched The Floating City Project.[35] The project proposed to locate a floating city within the territorial waters of an existing nation, rather than the open ocean.[36] TSI claimed that doing so would have several advantages:

In October 2013, the Institute raised $27,082 from 291 funders in a crowdfunding campaign[37] TSI used the funds to hire the Dutch marine engineering firm DeltaSync[38] to write an engineering study for The Floating City Project.

In September 2016 the Seasteading Institute met with officials in French Polynesia[39] to discuss building a prototype seastead in a sheltered lagoon. Teva Rohfristch, Minister for Economic Recovery was the first to invite The Seasteading Institute to meet with government officials.The meeting was arranged by Former Minister of Tourism, Marc Collins.[40]

On January 13, 2017, French Polynesia Minister of Housing, Jean-Christophe Bouissou signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with TSI to create the first semi-autonomous “seazone”. TSI spun off a for-profit company called “Blue Frontiers”, which will build and operate a prototype seastead in the zone.[41] The prototype will be based on a design by marine engineering firm Blue 21.[6][7]

On January 13, 2017, The French Polynesian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with The Seasteading Institute to cooperate on creating legal framework to allow for the development of The Floating Island Project. The legislation will give the Floating Island Project its own “special governing framework” creating an “innovative special economic zone.”[42]

The signor of the MOU, Minister of Housing, Jean-Christophe Bouissou declared the following day, “Polynesia is the haven where all things are possible. It is the Blue Frontier in the Great Pacific. It is also a country which had shown that its population wishes to forge ahead.”[43]

At this same time, the Seasteading Institute announced the formation of a new company, Blue Frontiers, to construct the Floating Island Project. Blue Frontiers is intended to create “new clean-tech and blue economy jobs that will attract both international and local investment.”[40]

Cruise ships are a proven technology, and address most of the challenges of living at sea for extended periods of time. However, they’re typically optimized for travel and short-term stay, not for permanent residence in a single location.

Examples:

Platform designs based on spar buoys, similar to oil platforms.[46] In this design, the platforms rest on spars in the shape of floating dumbbells, with the living area high above sea level. Building on spars in this fashion reduces the influence of wave action on the structure.[32]

Examples:

There are numerous seastead designs based around interlocking modules made of reinforced concrete.[48] Reinforced cement is used for floating docks, oil platforms, dams, and other marine structures.

Examples:

A single, monolithic structure that is not intended to be expanded or connected to other modules.

Examples:

The SeaOrbiter is an oceangoing research vessel designed to give scientists and others a residential yet mobile research station. The station will have laboratories, workshops, living quarters and a pressurized deck to support divers and submarines. It is headed by French architect Jacques Rougerie, oceanographer Jacques Piccard and astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien. The cost is expected to be around $52.7 million.[53]

Blueseed was a company aiming to float a ship near Silicon Valley to serve as a visa-free startup community and entrepreneurial incubator. Blueseed founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija met when both were employees of The Seasteading Institute. The project planned to offer living and office space, high-speed Internet connectivity, and regular ferry service to the mainland[54][44] but as of 2014 the project is “on hold”.[55][54][44]

Criticisms have been leveled at both the practicality and desirability of seasteading. These can be broken down into governmental, logistical, and societal categories.

Government regulations are generally considered to be beneficial, and both individuals and companies will be worse off without them.[56] Critics believe that creating governance structures from scratch is a lot harder than it seems.[56] Additionally, seasteads would still be at risk of political dominance at the hands of nation states.[18]

On a pure logistical level, Seasteads would be too remote, and not offer sufficient amenities (such as access to culture, restaurants, shopping) to be attractive to potential residents.[18] It is also possible that seasteads can’t be built to withstand open ocean conditions in an economical fashion.[56][18]

Seasteads may cause environmental damage from visual pollution, resource extraction, and waste production. Some critics believe that Seasteads will exploit both residents and the local population, though it this is purely hypothetical.[56] Some believe that Seasteads exist primarily to allow wealthy individuals to avoid paying taxes.[3] Others believe that Seasteads will allow seastead residents to pursue anti-social ends, such as avoiding financial, environmental, and labor regulations.[3][56]

The Seasteading Institute held its first conference in Burlingame, California, October 10, 2008. 45 people from 9 countries attended.[57] The second Seasteading conference was significantly larger, and held in San Francisco, California, September 2830, 2009.[58][59] The third Seasteading conference took place on May 31 – June 2, 2012.[60]

Seasteading has been imagined numerous times in pop culture in recent years.

Seasteading is the libertarian fantasy of attempting to establish a society on (or under) the sea. Given that a large swath of the oceans are international waters, outside the jurisdiction of any one country, some people see seasteading as the most viable possibility for creating new, autonomous states with their own pet political systems in place.

Given that international maritime law doesn’t, as such, recognize ginormous boats or artificial islands as stateless enclaves or independent nations, diplomatic recognition, if the owners actually need it, is somewhat problematic.

Seasteading is inspired by real life examples of boat-based provision of services not legal in certain countries. Examples include casino boats (ships that, upon reaching international waters, open up their gambling facilities to passengers) and the organization Women on Waves, which provides abortion services in countries (such as Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain) where abortion is illegal or in which the rules are stricter than they would prefer. Another example is pirate radio stations, which got their name from the fact that many of them operated from boats in international waters.

Several seasteading projects have been started; only two have ever been completed (three if you count Sealand and its ‘Prince’), and the vast majority have never even really begun. It is quite possible that herding libertarians is difficult.

Some cryonicists are seasteaders, which implies truly remarkably compartmentalised thinking about the value of large, stable social structures.

As they age, some libertarians are realising that replacing government may be more work than they can personally achieve as actualised individuals.[2]Reason, of course, tells them not to stop thinking about tomorrow.[3]

With the exception of Sealand, there have been three seasteading projects that could be considered “successful” in any sense of the word.

The longest-lived and most successful was the “Republic of Minerva,” an artificial island in the South Pacific constructed by real estate millionare Michael J. Oliver and his Phoenix Foundation using dredged sand to expand the tiny Minerva Reef. The intention was to establish an agrarian anarcho-capitalist utopia; presumably the libertarian supermen would evolve past the need to drink, as there was no source of fresh water on the island. Minerva formally declared independence in 1972 and attempted to establish diplomatic relations with the surrounding nations, though it was mostly ignored. The small settlement lasted for approximately five months, until the government of Tonga sent a military expedition (along with a convict work detail, a brass band, and HRM King Taufaahau Tupou himself) to claim the island by force (or rather, re-claim it; the original reef had been considered a culturally important Tongan fishing region). In 1982 a second group of Libertarians tried to reclaim the atoll but were again forced off by the Tongan military. Since then, the project has collapsed, and the island has since been mostly reclaimed by the sea.

Unabashed, Oliver tried to funnel funds into various separatist groups and revolutionaries in the Bahamas and Vanuatu, but was met with extremely little success. Today, the Phoenix Foundation still chugs on, eyeing tiny islands like the Isle of Man and the Azores and grumbling to themselves.

Rose Island, officially the “Respubliko de la Insulo de la Rozoj” (Republic of the Island of Roses) was a 400-square-meter artificial platform in the Mediterranean founded by an Italian casino entrepreneur in 1968. It styled itself as a libertarian capitalist state with Esperanto as its official language, but was in fact little more than a tourist resort complex, and had virtually no space for permanent residents. The Italian government, seeing the project as nothing more than a ploy to avoid having to pay taxes on revenue from the resort, seized the platform with police a few weeks after it opened and destroyed it with explosives[4].

Operation Atlantis was an American attempt by Libertarian soap-magnate Werner K. Steifel to create an anarcho-capitalist utopia (noticing a trend here?) in the Bahamas by building a large ferro-cement ship, sailing it to its destination, anchoring it there and living on it. The boat was built, launched from New York in 1971, and (after capsizing once on the Hudson river and catching fire) taken to its final position in the Caribbean, where it was secured in place. Preparations were made for the residents to immigrate to their new floating city-state, but unfortunately for them it sank almost immediately.[5][6] After two more attempts and eventually pouring a lot of money into an island off the coast of Belize that he couldn’t get autonomy for, the project collapsed.

Libertarians are hardly the only people to try and colonize the ocean. China, for instance, has used a version of seasteading in order to enforce its claims on the Spratly Islands, an archipelago in the South China Sea that’s claimed in whole or in part by six nations (the PRC, the ROC, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei). They’ve been hard at work using land reclamation to build artificial islands with airstrips, piers, harbors, and helipads, which they say are for military “and civilian” use.[7]

The video game Bioshock[8] features what is probably the best-known example of a seastead in popular culture both in form of the underwater city of Rapture and the flying city of Columbia. Spoiler: neither really panned out as intended.

The technology to foster the fluid mechanics of voluntary societies is at hand. The Seasteading Institute is a nonprofit think-tank working to provide a machinery of freedom to choose new societies on the blue frontier. The most successful floating cities can then inspire change around the world.

The technology to foster the fluid mechanics of voluntary societies is at hand. The Seasteading Institute is a nonprofit think-tank working to provide a machinery of freedom to choose new societies on the blue frontier. The most successful floating cities can then inspire change around the world.

Seasteading is the libertarian fantasy of attempting to establish a society on (or under) the sea. Given that a large swath of the oceans are international waters, outside the jurisdiction of any one country, some people see seasteading as the most viable possibility for creating new, autonomous states with their own pet political systems in place.

Given that international maritime law doesn’t, as such, recognize ginormous boats or artificial islands as stateless enclaves or independent nations, diplomatic recognition, if the owners actually need it, is somewhat problematic.

Seasteading is inspired by real life examples of boat-based provision of services not legal in certain countries. Examples include casino boats (ships that, upon reaching international waters, open up their gambling facilities to passengers) and the organization Women on Waves, which provides abortion services in countries (such as Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain) where abortion is illegal or in which the rules are stricter than they would prefer. Another example is pirate radio stations, which got their name from the fact that many of them operated from boats in international waters.

Several seasteading projects have been started; only two have ever been completed (three if you count Sealand and its ‘Prince’), and the vast majority have never even really begun. It is quite possible that herding libertarians is difficult.

Some cryonicists are seasteaders, which implies truly remarkably compartmentalised thinking about the value of large, stable social structures.

As they age, some libertarians are realising that replacing government may be more work than they can personally achieve as actualised individuals.[2]Reason, of course, tells them not to stop thinking about tomorrow.[3]

With the exception of Sealand, there have been three seasteading projects that could be considered “successful” in any sense of the word.

The longest-lived and most successful was the “Republic of Minerva,” an artificial island in the South Pacific constructed by real estate millionare Michael J. Oliver and his Phoenix Foundation using dredged sand to expand the tiny Minerva Reef. The intention was to establish an agrarian anarcho-capitalist utopia; presumably the libertarian supermen would evolve past the need to drink, as there was no source of fresh water on the island. Minerva formally declared independence in 1972 and attempted to establish diplomatic relations with the surrounding nations, though it was mostly ignored. The small settlement lasted for approximately five months, until the government of Tonga sent a military expedition (along with a convict work detail, a brass band, and HRM King Taufaahau Tupou himself) to claim the island by force (or rather, re-claim it; the original reef had been considered a culturally important Tongan fishing region). In 1982 a second group of Libertarians tried to reclaim the atoll but were again forced off by the Tongan military. Since then, the project has collapsed, and the island has since been mostly reclaimed by the sea.

Unabashed, Oliver tried to funnel funds into various separatist groups and revolutionaries in the Bahamas and Vanuatu, but was met with extremely little success. Today, the Phoenix Foundation still chugs on, eyeing tiny islands like the Isle of Man and the Azores and grumbling to themselves.

Rose Island, officially the “Respubliko de la Insulo de la Rozoj” (Republic of the Island of Roses) was a 400-square-meter artificial platform in the Mediterranean founded by an Italian casino entrepreneur in 1968. It styled itself as a libertarian capitalist state with Esperanto as its official language, but was in fact little more than a tourist resort complex, and had virtually no space for permanent residents. The Italian government, seeing the project as nothing more than a ploy to avoid having to pay taxes on revenue from the resort, seized the platform with police a few weeks after it opened and destroyed it with explosives[4].

Operation Atlantis was an American attempt by Libertarian soap-magnate Werner K. Steifel to create an anarcho-capitalist utopia (noticing a trend here?) in the Bahamas by building a large ferro-cement ship, sailing it to its destination, anchoring it there and living on it. The boat was built, launched from New York in 1971, and (after capsizing once on the Hudson river and catching fire) taken to its final position in the Caribbean, where it was secured in place. Preparations were made for the residents to immigrate to their new floating city-state, but unfortunately for them it sank almost immediately.[5][6] After two more attempts and eventually pouring a lot of money into an island off the coast of Belize that he couldn’t get autonomy for, the project collapsed.

Libertarians are hardly the only people to try and colonize the ocean. China, for instance, has used a version of seasteading in order to enforce its claims on the Spratly Islands, an archipelago in the South China Sea that’s claimed in whole or in part by six nations (the PRC, the ROC, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei). They’ve been hard at work using land reclamation to build artificial islands with airstrips, piers, harbors, and helipads, which they say are for military “and civilian” use.[7]

The video game Bioshock[8] features what is probably the best-known example of a seastead in popular culture both in form of the underwater city of Rapture and the flying city of Columbia. Spoiler: neither really panned out as intended.

Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by any government. The term is a combination of the words sea and homesteading.

Seasteaders say such autonomous floating cities will foster faster development of techniques “to feed the hungry, cure the sick, clean the atmosphere and enrich the poor”.[1][2] Some critics fear seasteads are designed more as a refuge for the wealthy to avoid taxes or other problems.[3][4]

Proposed structures have included modified cruise ships, refitted oil platform, a decommissioned anti-aircraft platform, and custom-built floating islands.[5] No one has yet created a state on the high seas that has been recognized as a sovereign state.

As an intermediate step, the Seasteading Institute has promoted cooperating with an existing nation to prototype floating islands that are legally semi-autonomous within the nation’s protected territorial waters. On January 13, 2017, the Seasteading Institute signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with French Polynesia to create the first semi-autonomous “seazone”. The “seazone” will be the location of a prototype seastead designed by marine engineering firm Blue 21.[6][7]

Many architects and firms have created designs for floating cities, including Vincent Callebaut,[8][9]Paolo Soleri[10] and companies such as Shimizu and E. Kevin Schopfer.[11]

Marshall Savage discussed building tethered artificial islands in his book The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps, with several color plates illustrating his ideas.

Other historical predecessors and inspirations for seasteading include:

At least two people independently coined the term seasteading: Ken Neumeyer in his book Sailing the Farm (1981) and Wayne Gramlich in his article “Seasteading Homesteading on the High Seas” (1998).[13]

Gramlichs essay attracted the attention of Patri Friedman.[14] The two began working together and posted their first collaborative book online in 2001.[15] Their book explored many aspects of seasteading from waste disposal to flags of convenience. This collaboration led to the creation of the non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI) in 2008.

On April 15, 2008, Wayne Gramlich and Patri Friedman founded the 501(c)(3) non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI), an organization formed to facilitate the establishment of autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms operating in international waters.[16][17][18]

Friedman and Gramlich noted that according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 nautical miles (370km) from shore. Beyond that boundary lie the high seas, which are not subject to the laws of any sovereign state other than the flag under which a ship sails.

They proposed that a seastead could take advantage of the absence of laws and regulations outside the sovereignty of nations to experiment with new governance systems, and allow the citizens of existing governments to exit more easily.

“When seasteading becomes a viable alternative, switching from one government to another would be a matter of sailing to the other without even leaving your house,” said Patri Friedman at the first annual Seasteading conference.[16][19][20]

The Seasteading Institute (TSI) focused on three areas: building a community, doing research, and building the first seastead in the San Francisco Bay. TSI advocated starting small, using proven technology as much as possible.[21]

The project picked up mainstream exposure after having been brought to the attention of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Thiel donated $500,000 in initial seed capital to start The Seasteading Institute, and has contributed $1.7 million [22] in total to date. He also spoke out on behalf of its viability in his essay “The Education of a Libertarian”.[23]

As a result of Thiel’s backing, TSI received widespread media attention from a variety of sources including [24]The Economist[18] Business Insider,[25] and BBC.[26][27]

In 2008, Friedman and Gramlich had hoped to float the first prototype seastead in the San Francisco Bay by 2010[28][29] Plans were to launch a seastead by 2014,[30] and TSI projected that the seasteading population would exceed 150 individuals in 2015.[31] TSI did not meet these initial targets.

In January 2009, the Seasteading Institute patented a design for a 200-person resort seastead, ClubStead, about a city block in size, produced by consultancy firm Marine Innovation & Technology. The ClubStead design marked the first major engineering analysis in the seasteading movement.[18][32][33]

In the spring of 2013,[34] TSI launched The Floating City Project.[35] The project proposed to locate a floating city within the territorial waters of an existing nation, rather than the open ocean.[36] TSI claimed that doing so would have several advantages:

In October 2013, the Institute raised $27,082 from 291 funders in a crowdfunding campaign[37] TSI used the funds to hire the Dutch marine engineering firm DeltaSync[38] to write an engineering study for The Floating City Project.

In September 2016 the Seasteading Institute met with officials in French Polynesia[39] to discuss building a prototype seastead in a sheltered lagoon. Teva Rohfristch, Minister for Economic Recovery was the first to invite The Seasteading Institute to meet with government officials.The meeting was arranged by Former Minister of Tourism, Marc Collins.[40]

On January 13, 2017, French Polynesia Minister of Housing, Jean-Christophe Bouissou signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with TSI to create the first semi-autonomous “seazone”. TSI spun off a for-profit company called “Blue Frontiers”, which will build and operate a prototype seastead in the zone.[41] The prototype will be based on a design by marine engineering firm Blue 21.[6][7]

On January 13, 2017, The French Polynesian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with The Seasteading Institute to cooperate on creating legal framework to allow for the development of The Floating Island Project. The legislation will give the Floating Island Project its own “special governing framework” creating an “innovative special economic zone.”[42]

The signor of the MOU, Minister of Housing, Jean-Christophe Bouissou declared the following day, “Polynesia is the haven where all things are possible. It is the Blue Frontier in the Great Pacific. It is also a country which had shown that its population wishes to forge ahead.”[43]

At this same time, the Seasteading Institute announced the formation of a new company, Blue Frontiers, to construct the Floating Island Project. Blue Frontiers is intended to create “new clean-tech and blue economy jobs that will attract both international and local investment.”[40]

Cruise ships are a proven technology, and address most of the challenges of living at sea for extended periods of time. However, they’re typically optimized for travel and short-term stay, not for permanent residence in a single location.

Examples:

Platform designs based on spar buoys, similar to oil platforms.[46] In this design, the platforms rest on spars in the shape of floating dumbbells, with the living area high above sea level. Building on spars in this fashion reduces the influence of wave action on the structure.[32]

Examples:

There are numerous seastead designs based around interlocking modules made of reinforced concrete.[48] Reinforced cement is used for floating docks, oil platforms, dams, and other marine structures.

Examples:

A single, monolithic structure that is not intended to be expanded or connected to other modules.

Examples:

The SeaOrbiter is an oceangoing research vessel designed to give scientists and others a residential yet mobile research station. The station will have laboratories, workshops, living quarters and a pressurized deck to support divers and submarines. It is headed by French architect Jacques Rougerie, oceanographer Jacques Piccard and astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien. The cost is expected to be around $52.7 million.[53]

Blueseed was a company aiming to float a ship near Silicon Valley to serve as a visa-free startup community and entrepreneurial incubator. Blueseed founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija met when both were employees of The Seasteading Institute. The project planned to offer living and office space, high-speed Internet connectivity, and regular ferry service to the mainland[54][44] but as of 2014 the project is “on hold”.[55][54][44]

Criticisms have been leveled at both the practicality and desirability of seasteading. These can be broken down into governmental, logistical, and societal categories.

Government regulations are generally considered to be beneficial, and both individuals and companies will be worse off without them.[56] Critics believe that creating governance structures from scratch is a lot harder than it seems.[56] Additionally, seasteads would still be at risk of political dominance at the hands of nation states.[18]

On a pure logistical level, Seasteads would be too remote, and not offer sufficient amenities (such as access to culture, restaurants, shopping) to be attractive to potential residents.[18] It is also possible that seasteads can’t be built to withstand open ocean conditions in an economical fashion.[56][18]

Seasteads may cause environmental damage from visual pollution, resource extraction, and waste production. Some critics believe that Seasteads will exploit both residents and the local population, though it this is purely hypothetical.[56] Some believe that Seasteads exist primarily to allow wealthy individuals to avoid paying taxes.[3] Others believe that Seasteads will allow seastead residents to pursue anti-social ends, such as avoiding financial, environmental, and labor regulations.[3][56]

The Seasteading Institute held its first conference in Burlingame, California, October 10, 2008. 45 people from 9 countries attended.[57] The second Seasteading conference was significantly larger, and held in San Francisco, California, September 2830, 2009.[58][59] The third Seasteading conference took place on May 31 – June 2, 2012.[60]

Seasteading has been imagined numerous times in pop culture in recent years.

On January 13, 2017, we entered Phase 3 of the Floating City Project, now called the Floating Island Project.

On that day, delegates from the government of French Polynesia travelled to San Francisco to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with us agreeing to cooperate on developing legislation for The Floating Island Project by the end of 2017. The MOU obligates The Seasteading Institute to conduct an economic analysis to demonstrate the economic benefits for French Polynesia, as well as an environmental assessment to assure the health of the ocean and seabed. When these studies are complete, French Polynesia will collaborate with The Seasteading Institute to develop a special governing framework for a land base and sea zone.

On January 13, 2017, we entered Phase 3 of the Floating City Project, now called the Floating Island Project.

On that day, delegates from the government of French Polynesia travelled to San Francisco to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with us agreeing to cooperate on developing legislation for The Floating Island Project by the end of 2017. The MOU obligates The Seasteading Institute to conduct an economic analysis to demonstrate the economic benefits for French Polynesia, as well as an environmental assessment to assure the health of the ocean and seabed. When these studies are complete, French Polynesia will collaborate with The Seasteading Institute to develop a special governing framework for a land base and sea zone.

A bold vision of the near future: cities built on floating platforms in the ocean, where people will forge their own governments and by living sustainably will solve many of our critical environmental problems.

Our planet is suffering from serious environmental problems: coastal flooding due to severe storms caused in part by atmospheric pollution, diminishing natural resources such as clean water, and so on. But while these problems plague Planet Earth, two-thirds of our globe is Planet Ocean. The seas can be home to pioneers, seasteaders, who are willing to homestead the Blue Frontier. Oil platforms and cruise ships already inhabit the waters; now its time to take the next step to full-fledged ocean civilizations. In their fascinating examination of a practical solution to our earthly problems, Joe Quirk and Patri Friedman profile some of the visionaries who are implementing basic concepts of seasteading: farming the oceans for new sources of nutrition; using the seas as a new sustainable energy source; establishing more equitable economies; reinventing architecture to accommodate the demands of living on the ocean.

These pioneers include Ricardo Radulovich, an agricultural water scientist who has built prototypes for giant seaweed farms to create new food sources; Neil Sims, a biologist who has invented new sustainable free-floating fish farms; Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones, a biotechnology entrepreneur investing heavily in algae fuel to replace fossil fuels; Patrick Takahashi, a biochemical engineer who wants to create floating cities that draw on the oceans as an energy source, and many others. Their research efforts have been supported by organizations like the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Lockheed Martin.

An entrepreneurs dream, these floating cities will become laboratories for innovation and creativity. Seasteading may be visionary, but it already has begun proving the adage that yesterdays science fiction is tomorrows science fact. Welcome to seavilization.